Tips from Tina: Three ways to maximize your social media

Social media has become a staple in every marketing toolbox. However, for many companies, posting to social channels is a blanket process. For instance, you might post your company’s latest press release on LinkedIn, repeat the post on Facebook, and shorten it for Twitter. This approach may optimize your workflow, but it’s limiting your free content from realizing its full potential. Taking the time to use each channel appropriately, creatively procure content, and fully engage your employee base can improve your visibility, impact your engagement metrics, and enable you to achieve some return on your investment of time and talent. 

Finding the Sweet Spot

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell, but social media channels do have different audiences. We know those lines get blurred, but in general terms LinkedIn is focused on professionals and jobseekers, Facebook is associated with more personal sharing, but can be used for brand building, and Twitter is associated with the sharing of ideas both personal and professional.

Looking at the unique, albeit not exclusive, attributes of each channel, you can see how audiences fall into one bucket or another.  Take a few moments to think about the nuanced differences between the channels and tweak the content and image to speak to those audiences. 

Sowing the Fields of Your Content Farm

When you’re compiling your social media editorial calendar, don’t  feel that you have to limit yourself to posts about upcoming professional days, your company’s latest press release, or a graphic of an upcoming webinar. There are probably other assets that you, your team, or your company’s subject matter experts (SMEs)  are producing that could be used on social media.  

This can include white papers, study abstracts, poster presentations, and blog posts. Obviously, you don’t want to post a 30-page white paper on your LinkedIn feed, but a short teaser with an engaging photo would be great.  And you know what would be even better? A short teaser video with the author(s) talking about why this white paper is groundbreaking. Or maybe a quick animated graphic of that amazing research poster that links to a full abstract and image of the research. 

Taking a step away from the ordinary can expand the acreage of your social media content farm giving you new options for engaging, relevant content. 

Don’t Forget Your Employees

Employees are an important part of your social media strategy. 

Featuring high-performing employees in your social media calendar is great for both morale and recruitment.  But let’s not just feature our employees, let’s bring them into the conversation. Your employees can serve as individual communication vehicles. And leveraging their social media influence to advocate for your company can move your social media strategy to the next level.   

Think of it this way, employees are to your social media game what home field advantage is to a football team.  They are—or should be—your number one fans, staunchest supporters, and biggest champions. Make it easy for them to share good news about your company through their own social media channels.  It’s a great way to build loyalty and engagement within your company and it exponentially increases your reach pretty quickly.  Also, make it easy for them, and consider setting up an employee sharing protocol or portal where you provide an ongoing supply of posts for employees to share. 

Rethinking your strategy for social media can go a long way in making sure you're optimizing all the tools in your toolbox. And with a little ingenuity and attention, basic social media can be a powerful element in your brand building and marketing efforts.